Earth Day 2022

How we do our part 

We're a business that's constantly learning and trying to do our best when it comes to packaging and sourcing produce! Already, we've learnt so much along the way and today we'd like to share this with you, with it being Earth Day. 

Packaging 

From the beginning, we've actually been quite good at making sure that our packaging is as eco-friendly as possible (though we've not been very good at communicating it to you!). When we first came up with the business idea back in 2020, I'd read one of @jayrayner1 reviews about a meal kit he'd tried and he was raving about the full compostable vegware pots and this is where I'd started my research. These can be thrown away with your food waste! "Oooooh that is clever" I'd said to myself and I ordered that straight away.

Obviously food safety is number one and so I went deep into research about what packaging is out there for this.

For us, Wool Cool works well as it keeps the food cold (though it does smell a tad farmy haha). We like things to be compostable and when we saw that the wool is reusable and compostable we chose this for our boxes. We soon after also found eco pouches from The Vacuum Pouch and they're compostable with your food waste too! I don't know the science behind it all, but it's plant based - incredible don't you think?

Our cardboard boxes, recipe cards and small amount of plastic used (e.g. the thin film containing the wool cool and plastic vacuum pack bags we use for meats and saucy products as we don't want to risk leakages) are all recyclable (in your recycle bin at home) so overall, while we're not plastic free, we're happy with where we've got our packaging to.

Produce 

We're proud to say that each week, because our boxes are made to order, we only buy what what we need and have very little waste! You're sent pre-portioned ingredients so you're zero waste and on our end, the little that is left (because ingredients are bought in boxes/trays), is shifted to makanai's (Japanese word for staff lunches) and home eating (aka Nick and Yoko juicing vegetables or souping it up lol).

So we're doing ok overall, I think. We're far from perfect and one of our big challenges is the way that the food is delivered to us. E.g. shimeji mushrooms come individually wrapped in 300g packs and so we're ending up with tonnes of plastic to recycle at the end. We'd love to continue to explore any suppliers who would provide these to us, plastic free.

Anyway, I hope you found that interesting / helpful.

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